Mick Hartley

Arthur S. Siegel, May 1943. "Bethlehem-Fairfield shipyards, Baltimore, Maryland. Women workers during lunch hour."

[Photo: Shorpy/Arthur S. Siegel for the Office of War Information]

You may be wondering – I think we all are – about King's College London's new Visiting Research Fellow Yasmin Benoit, after her courageous asexual coming-out. Asexuals are, as we now know thanks to Yasmin's eloquent advocacy, a persecuted demographic. So, what contribution has she been making on the academic front?

Well…

New research suggests people who are asexual face considerable ignorance and potentially intolerance, with as many as one in three (31%) respondents in an experimental study of 400 people believing asexuality can be “cured” by therapy.

The research, carried out by the Policy Institute at King’s College London in collaboration with the aromantic-asexual activist and model Yasmin Benoit, also finds around one in four (23%) participants wrongly believe asexuality is a mental health problem.

Not only asexual, but aromatic too. Good lord.

Ah sorry…aromantic.

The study, based on a survey of 400 people in England, suggests notable minorities hold other misconceptions about asexuality:

• Two in five (42%) respondents believe people cannot be asexual if they have sex. The authors emphasise that in reality asexuality refers to how someone feels about sex, and whether they experience sexual attraction – not their behaviour.
• A quarter (26%) believe asexual people just haven’t met the right person yet.
• One in nine (11%) go as far as saying they don’t believe asexual people exist.

The ignorance is astounding. Imagine two in five people thinking that if you have sex you can't be asexual. Clearly Benoit, as a lingerie model who likes to show off her well-developed decolletage, may not be lacking in sexual experience. That doesn't mean she has to like it.

Yasmin Benoit, aromantic-asexual activist and Visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London’s Policy Institute, said:

“Acephobia – that is, discrimination, prejudice and negative attitudes towards those who identify as asexual – is not something that most people recognise or take seriously. It's something the asexual community are not protected from. My experiences with this kind of intolerance are well-documented, but there's a huge lack of research into the phenomenon. It's essential to raise awareness and collect data to create the change the asexual community needs. It's an honour to be able to work with King's College London on this research as a Visiting Fellow and be part of that progress.”

Michael Sanders, Professor of Public Policy at the Policy Institute, said:

“Our previous work on the wellbeing of university students revealed those who identify as asexual have the worst wellbeing of any group in the LGBQA grouping, yet there is little quantitative data relating to their experiences or to wider public perceptions of asexual people. We wanted to address this gap, and our study is the first that we’re aware of that makes use of these methods to assess people’s attitudes towards asexuality. The findings are troubling, both in that many people hold misconceptions about asexuality, and that they are happy voicing discriminatory views – at a greater rate than for other groups.”

An important step in the battle against acephobia.

A couple of thoughts, though…

Like most things human, our levels of sexuality are surely on a scale. Some go for it full-time; others aren't all that bothered. This is really a non-problem, designed for grifters like Benoit and for academics who like to expand their little empires. Define a new problem and enough sad people will sign up for it – telling their friends, bothering their doctors/therapists, and soon enough adding their colours to the ever-expanding Pride flag as yet another discriminated-against minority, even though there's no obvious connection between the LGB and the A. As sure as night follows day, a new problem must have its new phobia…so, join the party.

Also, if these people really have "the worst wellbeing of any group in the LGBQA grouping", maybe that's the nature of the beast. They're miserable because they don't like getting involved with other people.

CANADA: The transgender advisor to the Minister for Women is facing backlash after claiming trans-identified males have no advantages over women in sports.

Nathanielle Morin himself once won a women's race, beating the fastest woman by over 5 minutes.https://t.co/5XcOynrson

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) February 7, 2025

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Full story here.

Photographer Peter Fryer at Café Royal Books:

[Photos © Café Royal Books/Peter Fryer]

[As ever, click on the photos to enlarge]

From the Daily NK:

A young North Korean woman was publicly executed by firing squad in late January in Sinuiju, North Pyongan province, following her conviction for murder, Daily NK has learned.

The execution was reportedly carried out in public as a deterrent amid rising violent crime linked to economic hardship. According to a source in North Pyongan province, the execution took place on Jan. 20 at an empty lot near Chaeha market, following an immediate public trial by city police and court officials.

The condemned woman, identified only by her surname Lee and in her early 20s, was convicted of murdering an elderly couple in their 70s last October. The case had initially gone unsolved, with Daily NK reporting in November that authorities had failed to identify any suspects after a month of investigation. Three months later, Lee was arrested, swiftly tried, and executed….

The sudden execution immediately following the trial shocked onlookers who had gathered to watch the proceedings. Disturbingly, children under 10 were present in the crowd. “We didn’t know there would be a public execution. A lot of children there were traumatized seeing their first public execution,” the source said.

While public executions in North Korea have decreased in recent years, authorities appear to be returning to harsher measures as economic conditions deteriorate and violent crimes increase. “As people struggle to make a living, more violent crimes are being committed. The authorities are responding with more public trials and firing squad executions, hoping to deter such crimes,” the source explained.

David Patrikarakos at UnHerd rubbishes the Trump Gaza plan, but then equivocates somewhat at the end. His conclusion:

But if this idea is dangerous, impetuous and unlikely to see the light of day, the impulse behind it (even though borne from instinct rather than design) — to think about a seemingly unsolvable problem in a new light, however crazed, is perhaps worthwhile. As policy, Trump’s Gaza plan is a disaster; as a thought experiment, it’s absurd. But such an unthinkable suggestion might actually kickstart the sort of unorthodox, disruptive thinking that has eluded more measured, knowledgeable and sharper minds — and which has helped to keep peace so tortuously at bay for almost 60 years.

Well yes. That is, perhaps, the point.

A comment on the article:

I wonder how many Palestinians wouldn’t rather spend their threescore-and-ten building their lives somewhere other than the rubble that Gaza now is, and wouldn’t jump at the chance to move elsewhere for the chance of a better life.
Maybe they do all desire to return to penury and destitution, living in the ruins of what used to be their houses, ruled by Hamas and seeing their children go off to pointless deaths in a jihadi cul-de-sac. They get bonus payments, apparently, for dead kids. And Heaven awaits, sultanas and all.
So tough choices.
But is it really so absurd that Trump is pushing a plan that would at least give individual Palestinians that choice? Or is it absurd that Western liberals would deny them that choice?
Is it not absurd, in fact, that the UN, and geniuses of similar ilk, has spent decades financing a terrorist government of a quasi-state, seen the consequences, and decided that somehow a return to this situation is in everyone’s best interests.
Trump’s thinking on this is way outside the Overton window, sure. The author claims that as policy the plan is a ‘disaster’. Take a good long look at Gaza, and tell me what current bien pensant policy is then. Trump’s plan has at least the advantage of looking like good sense at the outset.
As a thought experiment, it is absurd only to those incapable of seeing beyond the bounds of an Overton window that will leave their lack of imagination behind as it moves.

Helen Joyce reviews Victoria Smith's new book UnKind at The Critic:

"What about men?” Anyone who runs something solely for women — a women’s centre, a course for female leaders, International Women’s Day — gets used to being asked this question. 

In recent years, the spread of trans ideology has strengthened this assumption that anything reserved for women must be a theft from men. Women’s toilets, changing rooms, rape crisis centres, even prison cells: women who want them protected can’t possibly be motivated by concern for women. Their true aim must be to spite men. Why can’t they just be kind?

In this elegant and insightful book, Victoria Smith dubs this mindset JustBeKindism: a “toxic mutation” of an entrenched belief that when women focus their care and attention on other women, they are being big meanies. Womanhood itself is now a good unjustly hoarded: TERFS (trans-exclusionary radical feminists), with their insistence on recognising that men cannot be women, are the epitome of unkind. Even feminism cannot be for women. In the words of American writer Julia Serano, a trans-identifying man: “It is negligent for feminists to focus only on those who are female-bodied.”

In JustBeKindism, Smith points out, men make the best women. Proving her point, since 2013, when the BBC started an annual award for 100 “women of the year”, nearly every list has included at least one trans-identifying man. This year’s is Brigitte Baptiste, a Colombian biologist who “uses a queer lens to analyse landscapes and species” and gave a TedX talk in which he claimed that the Quindío wax palm, Colombia’s national tree, is transsexual. These meagre achievements were deemed more worthy of recognition than anything done in 2024 by 4 billion actual women.

In JustBeKindism, actual women are beneath contempt. Smith quotes Andrea Long Chu, a trans-identifying man and the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Females: A Concern (the title alone merits an award for mansplaining). “Female,” says Chu, means “any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another … [The] barest essentials [of femaleness are] an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.”

Just Be Kind is of course the mantra churned out by those who support trans women (men) competing in women's sport: refusing to be "inclusive" – so cruel – and hey, there are only a few of them so what's the big problem? Just be kind, can't you? Ditto for trans men (more often than not, it seems, sex offenders) in women's prisons. And men like Spanish trans actor Karla Sofía Gascón up for best actress at the Academy Awards. The list goes on. Never works the other way, somehow.

From the Telegraph:

Lego can be anti-LGBT, the Science Museum has said.

A self-guided museum tour on “stories of queer communities, experiences and identities” includes a display of Lego bricks alongside a guide stating the plastic blocks may reinforce the idea that heterosexuality “is the norm”.

The tour, devised by a Gender and Sexuality Network at the museum, also claims in the “Seeing Things Queerly” guide that Lego adds credence to the view that there are only two genders.

This is because people supposedly describe Lego bricks as having male or female parts that are made to “mate” with each other. This is “heteronormative”, the guide states, which is the idea that “heterosexuality and the male/female gender binary are the norm and everything that falls outside is unusual”.

The Science Museum guide claims that people think “the top of the brick with sticking out pins is male, the bottom of the brick with holes to receive the pins is female, and the process of the two sides being put together is called mating”.

No source is provided for the alleged view that people consider Lego to be gendered, or that sticking bricks together is called “mating”.

Because they just made it up.

Red Cross: Humanitarian bystander of the year

ft. @ShutupLyle pic.twitter.com/kxdBjGgG2t

— ארץ נהדרת (@Eretz_Nehederet) February 6, 2025

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From MEMRI TV:

British-Palestinian academic Ghada Karmi praised Hamas during her speech at the Islamic Human Rights Council (IHRC) Genocide Memorial Day on January 19, 2025. She said that she would like to “pay tribute to Hamas,” which has been “completely demonized.” Karmi said that Israel cannot be accommodated or reformed, nor could it be made to join the human family, and therefore it must be dismantled. She added that it is necessary to work towards ridding the region and the world of Israel. Speakers at the event spoke into microphones of Iran state English-language Press TV and Iran Press news agency. The Islamic Human Rights Council is based in London, and it has been accused of having direct ties to Iran.

 Ghada Karmi at Wikipedia: 

She has written on Palestinian issues in newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The Nation and Journal of Palestine Studies. […]

Karmi is an associate fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, and a visiting professor at London Metropolitan University. She is also vice-chair of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU).

She delivered the Edward Said Memorial lecture at the University of Adelaide, Australia in 2007.

According to her website she's currently a Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.

Coming out with unhinged stuff about ridding the world of Israel, and lauding a genocidal antisemitic terrorist group, clearly does wonders for your academic career.